How Can You Think Otherwise?

“...all we need to do to fix the world’s problems is adjust the feelings attached to them and open up the floor for various identity groups to have their say. All the old, enlightened means of discussion and analysis—from due process to scientific method—are dismissed as being blind to emotional concerns and therefore unfairly skewed toward the interest of straight white males. All that matters is that people are allowed to speak, that their narratives are accepted without question, and that the bad feelings go away.

No one can rebut feelings, and so the only thing left to do is shut down the things that cause distress—no argument, no discussion, just hit the mute button and pretend eliminating discomfort is the same as effecting actual change. So it’s not just that students refuse to countenance uncomfortable ideas—they refuse to engage them, period. Engagement is considered unnecessary, as the immediate, emotional reactions of students contain all the analysis and judgment that sensitive issues demand.”

The above is from an article in Vox magazine published in June of 2015. I read it at the time and copied these two paragraphs, because the line of thinking represented therein really bothered me. Three years later, the paragraphs were still sitting in the Notes app of my iPad, literally the first thing I ever used the app for. Three years later, and I work at a University and have seen first-hand that this line of thinking is alive and well. But yesterday, for the first time, I finally got told to stop Mansplaining (which my autocorrect recognizes as a legitimate word) and that my position as an older (ouch!) white male discredited my argument as to the importance of defining terms correctly when engaging in public debate. The original topic was terrorism vs. mass murder, when is it one or the other? By the time I was shouted-down, it had morphed into whether or not speech itself was violence.

My two primary opponents were a PhD and an attorney, who both made sure I knew the authority that their intellectual pedigree imputed to their otherwise shaky arguments (dissembling, changing the subject, parsing the difference between assault/battery in an analogy I used), before ultimately resorting to a categorical dismissal of my argument based on my identity as a white male. And an old one, at that!

It was disturbing, because we weren’t debating topics like sexism or discrimination, where I would naturally defer to someone’s life experience, rather than rely on simple rhetoric to tell people what they have or haven’t lived through. We were debating the definition of words. Which, theoretically, should have virtually as fixed a value as a mathematical equation, and in any case be unaffected by my cultural identity. The sky is blue, 2+2=4, and violence means violence. If the mouth that those truths comes out of affects a person’s ability to recognize the truth, all is lost.

The title of the Vox article was “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me.” When I went back to read it again, I found that the article has been blacked out by Vox, and you can no longer read it on their site, which I found kind of chilling. But the genie was already out of the bottle and the text of the article, as well as scathing rebuttals to it, are scattered far and wide on the internet. I’ve since read a half-dozen responses to the essay, which excoriated the anonymous professor who wrote it, which I’m sure is why Vox shut it down to begin with. I have been unable to discover who the real Edward Schlosser—the anonymous professor—is, but I’m betting he’s glad that he wrote it under a pseudonym at this point.

Further into the now-censored Vox article, the anonymous professor goes on to analyze a piece in New York Magazine by Liberal commentator Jonathan Chait called “How the Language Police Are Perverting Liberalism,” wherein Chait asks if "the offensiveness of an idea can be determined objectively, or only by recourse to the identity of the person taking offense." Anonymous Vox Professor had this to say in response:

“Here, he's getting at the worry that our judgment of a person's speech hinges more upon their identity signifiers than on their ideas. A sensible response to Chait's question would be that this is a false binary, and that ideas can and should be judged both by the strength of their logic and by the cultural weight afforded to their speaker's identity. Chait appears to believe only the former, and that's kind of ridiculous. Of course someone's social standing affects whether their ideas are considered offensive, or righteous, or even worth listening to. How can you think otherwise?”

When I first read this reply, I was agog. It had never occurred to me that people could even think this way. I can’t believe that I have to say this, but feelings and facts are not the same thing. They do not hold the same weight in debate, education, or the public forum. “But my feelings,” is not a valid response to anyone other than your mother. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re tall or short, skinny or fat, rich or poor, gay or straight, cisgender or non-binary, black, white, yellow, red, brown, or chartreuse.

“…that ideas can and should be judged both by the strength of their logic and by the cultural weight afforded to their speaker's identity. Chait appears to believe only the former, and that's kind of ridiculous… How can you think otherwise?”

I’m sorry, I keep thinking that if I repeat these words over and over again their preposterous nature will become self-evident and self-indicting. Donald Trump may have introduced us to the idiotic term “alternative facts,” but no one gets to have those, any more than they can have an opinion on the boiling point of water. Words mean things. And those definitions don’t change their meaning because you’re triggered, traumatized, or they give you icky feelings.

Now let me be the first to admit that getting shut down in debate because of my race, gender, and age was more than disconcerting. It was more than irritating. It enraged me. But stewing in that rage, I’ve had time to reflect on how others not as “privileged” as me (for lack of a better term) have felt many times throughout their lives. I’m not so tone-deaf as to believe that this is a new or unique experience, and it’s certainly not the first I’ve noticed of it happening in the world. It was just the first time it’s happened to me. Of course I’ve been told to shut up because I was impertinent, inexperienced, or not in possession of all the facts. But never because of who I am.

A couple of days ago, I was in a regularly-scheduled construction planning meeting at the University lead by a woman named Maggie. Having worked with Maggie for two years now, I can say that not only is she accomplished, capable, and educated, but she’s probably the most practical voice in the insane asylum of University politics. She really knows her stuff. Not just the ins and outs of her profession as Head Designer, but the intricacies of negotiating inter-departmental politics and the nuances of interpersonal office relationships. In spite of that, I notice how often she is interrupted or talked over during the meetings she’s leading. 

Now in a room full of construction-types, which is almost exclusively made up of men, there is always going to be jostling and brusqueness, it’s just endemic to the species. You always have to be prepared to stand you ground, and assert yourself to be heard. It’s no place for the thin-skinned. But among themselves, the words of these construction-types bump-up hard against each other with room for nary a breath to pass between, but rarely ride roughshod over the top, like they do with Maggie. She’s a gracious person, and always finds a way to humorously shepherd the conversation back onto track, but the difference between how they treat her and how they treat each other is pretty stark to someone who is paying attention. And this in a room full of men schooled in the rules of PC, which is no doubt mitigating the effect. Nonetheless, it’s still pretty bad.

That people can, with no fear of consequences, tell someone not in a protected group to be quiet because of their identity is proof enough that we’ve swung the pendulum past its tipping point in the other direction. If you can replace the word white with black in a sentence and make it offensive, it must logically be offensive either way. Logic is either a sword that cuts both ways, or else it isn’t logic at all. And the fact that conveniently selective application can now be passed off with a straight face as though it were objective is a sign that the cancer of this line of thinking has metastasized in front of our eyes.

So yeah, it sucked. But it didn’t change the logic of my argument, any more than silencing a person changes their mind. It doesn’t make the silenced wrong, it demonstrates others' fear of what they have to say. It used to be that people insisted on the right to their own opinion. Now we’ve arrived at a time and place in history where people insist on the right to their own facts. How can you think otherwise?

“On hearing their answer, we witness how a civilization begins its collapse. Postmodern academics use the license of the mightier and more insistent to have their way. How often do we hear this mantra?: “I’m a fill-in-the-blank, and I’m very passionate about this issue.” Such declarations have the effect of warning all with a different opinion to shut up, lest they be accused of insensitivity to the other’s feelings. Passion prevails over impotent reason.”

                            —2015 Forbes article “We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us.”